Captain's Slog: Stardate Summer 2016

Year: 2016

Director: Justin Lin

Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban 

Run Time: 2 hours 2 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Forgive me reader, for I have sinned. I have never seen a single episode of any Star Trek series. Hardcore sci-fi fandom is a little above my pay grade. However, I have seen J. J. Abrams’ 2009 lens flare expo Star Trek, so I feel perfectly capable of reviewing Star Trek Beyond, the reason I’ve gathered you here today. However, I’m not certain Star Trek Beyond is capable of being reviewed, because it’s the most Movie movie I’ve ever encountered.

It might as well be called Captain Whiteguy and the MacGuffin Adventure.

Directed by Justin Lin of the Fast and/or Furious franchise, for the first time in this new continuity the screen is actually visible, but you kind of wish it wasn’t. Or at least, you don’t need it to be, because every beat is exactly as predictable and nonsensical as every other sci-fi/fantasy adventure in the past 40 years. Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is getting weary of space travel, probably because he still doesn’t have a  love interest, and this film is all about slam-jammin’ forced romances into every nook and cranny. 

He is considering stepping down and letting Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) take the lead of his crew: sassy doctor Bones (Karl Urban), visibly bored Spock love interest Lt. Uhura (Zoe Saldana), outrageously Scottish engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg, who also co-wrote this film), totally organically gay pilot Sulu (John Cho), and I’m-not-actually-sure-what-he-does Chekov (Anton Yelchin, may he rest in peace). But before Kirk calls it quits, he’ll go on One Last Mission.

Guess how that goes. The USS Enterprise is dealt a devastating blow by the forces of Krall (Idris Elba) who desperately seeks the MacGuffin they have on the ship for no good reason. They crash land on an uncharted planet and must survive the wilderness, relocate the rest of their team, and stop Krall from wreaking wicked, MacGuffiny havoc on a nearby federation base, which the movie stops dead for five minutes to show us the majesty of, even though it looks almost exactly like an M.C. Escher version of that city from the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Zoe Saldana was probably having flashbacks.

The Star Trek franchise is finally free of its lens flare prison. Praise Roddenberry! But nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Hollywood. So they’ve replaced J. J. Abrams’ shiny crutch with a truly shocking profusion of camera spins. The frame rotates this way and that like the DP used a Lazy Susan instead of a tripod, even using spinning shots as reactions to other spinning shots. It’s like being strapped to a windmill and it’s massively unpleasant.

A frustrating aesthetic is a bad starting point when your movie is this numbingly generic, because once you break through that crust there’s nothing really worth digesting on the inside. It feels like a story written with a randomized cliché generator (which might be thanks to the dozen or so studios that collaborated on this film), mixing personal favorites like “they’ve been watching us this whole time,” the convenient injury that’s only debilitating when the plot needs drama, and the Big Evil Thing in the Sky over a City, mixed with some Abrams Star Trek standbys like people having long conversations while their ship is being actively destroyed, and ludicrous technobabble monologues split between a dozen people to keep things snappy.

It’s the “celebrity PSA” method of screenwriting.

Unfortunately, Star Trek Beyond opens on one of its strongest sequence, an adventure-of-the-week scenario that depicts Captain Kirk doing his best Jason Bateman impression in a silly popcorn movie diplomatic mission. From here, you would assume that the movie will be full of frothy summer fun, but it quickly devolves once more into dour, self-serious didacticism. That unabashed goofiness returns in spurts, especially in the interplay between Spock and Bones (the only time Quinto is given anything to do other than being the film’s conduit for mourning Leonard Nimoy), but for the most part Beyond is just one more plodding downer in a summer heavy with them.

It finally loosens up for a pair of decent action sequences in the preamble to the finale, and the heavy-handed climax does do some fun (if geographically vexing) things with antigravity, but it’s too little too late for a film that already had a slippery grasp on merely being middling

It’s a thoroughly watchable CGI-laden blockbuster for the majority of its runtime, especially thanks to a charming new character played by Kingsman’s Sofia Boutella, but when Star Trek Beyond is bad, it’s atrocious. The dialogue is so wooden I’m surprised the actors’ mouths didn’t get splinters, and certain scenes are so overloaded with crashing, screeching sound effects that the words are plumb inaudible. But when you’re watching the crew tear through a bundle of half-assed video game levels, I suppose the script isn’t all that necessary.

Star Trek beyond may have shucked off the visually despicable deficiencies of the tyrant J. J. Abrams, but the franchise is left a shallow husk of itself. I suppose it’s too late to warn you away, but man what a miserable move year this is shaping up to be.

TL;DR: Star Trek Beyond is a hideously generic, mildly diverting blockbuster.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 894

Reviews In This Series
Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016)

Cardboard Science: Michael Rennie Was Ill

Part of Popcorn Culture's October festivities is a crossover feature with my friend Hunter over at Kinemalogue. He will be taking on three Census Bloodbath titles while I face three artifacts from one of his regular features - Cardboard Science, which explores science fiction B-movies from the 1950's. I've previously reviewed 1953's Invaders From Mars and his recent review of My Bloody Valentine is an excellent discussion of the socioeconomic themes of that film as well as its place in the slasher pantheon.

Year: 1951

Director: Robert Wise

Cast: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

There is perhaps no better example of the thematic potential of the B-movie than The Day the Earth Stood Still. The beauty of these tricky little films was that, since they were low-budget romps tossed-off on the back of a studio film to rake in a tidy profit, producers kinda didn't care about them. This allowed the filmmakers to pour all sorts of ire about the state of society (and in the 1950's what a society it was - rigid suburban families ignoring the plight of the urban folk, the imminent threat of nuclear disaster - it was a hoot and a half) into the subtext of surface-level tales about robots and ray guns and flying saucers.

We'll discuss the specific details of The Day the Earth Stood Still and its deeper meanings a little later in this review, but the sheer scope of this film's marriage of political sociology and science fiction tropes is nearly unparalleled and worth mentioning at every salient point of an analytical discussion.

Especially because the surface level isn't exactly Kubrickian spectacle.

One of the best things about the plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still is that it starts right away, no frills. After the opening sequence, an Unidentified Flying Object lands on the National Mall in Washington, D. C. And by the ten-minute mark, a robot is already disintegrating tanks with his laser vision. Talk about hitting the ground running!

After a bit, the film settles down into a more domestic plot that, while significantly less exciting, never ceases to entertain. Klaatu (Michael Rennie) is an alien visitor seeking to spread a message from his peaceful culture to all nations of the Earth. When the American Secretary deems this impossible, Klaatu escapes the hospital where he's being held and takes up residence in a nearby boarding house while the authorities are on the hunt for him.

Luckily for Klaatu he speaks English and looks exactly like Michael Rennie so he can blend in no problem. Through two neighbors - obligatory golly gosh gee whiz young boy Bobby (Billy Gray) and his single mother Helen (Patricia Neal) - he learns about the good side of humanity while the government and the military hasten to provide a counterargument.

Behold! The most hideous, vile alien creature to visit Earth! Pictured here with his friend Klaatu.

All this is pretty bog-standard material for films of this pedigree. The special effects likewise don't quite lift The Day the Earth Stood Still above and beyond its peers: Klaatu's robot pal Gort (Lock Martin, who not only wasn't a robot, he wasn't even an actor - he was just a conspicuously tall doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theater and if that's not the most Hollywood thing you've ever heard, please stop watching TMZ) looks rather wrinkled at the kneecaps and the spaceship itself looks culled from the papier mâché department of the 99 Cent Store.

But trust me, we're not here to mock the film. Special effects were not what they are now and the budgets for these things could hardly buy you a pack of crackers after inflation, so the craftsmanship is actually quite admirable given the circumstances (especially notable is the seamless way the ship's ramp emerges from its smooth side). And they must have blown quite a bit of their cash on a series of shots that depict the UFO's impact around the world, which gives the film a vitally necessary sense of scope it couldn't possibly have achieved otherwise.

Très scope.

But all of these trappings and pomp and circumstance serve a marvelous purpose, underscoring the film's major thematic through line that manages to be powerfully bold without tipping into the "annoyingly preachy" zone. There is an obvious Christ metaphor that runs along the whole thing (Klaatu preaches a message of peace, is destroyed by the people he seeks to save, and is resurrected to spread his final words), but even that plays second fiddle to the throbbing heart of the film's politics.

The Day the Earth Stood Still denounces the violence and warmongering of human society - America included, in an audacious furor perhaps unmatched by any film released under the Hays Code (a startlingly strict censorship code that applied to all movies between the 30's and the 50's - read more here.). Klaatu denounces American culture's reliance on violence and their substitution of fear for reason. When he approaches them seeking peace, their only response is to strike him down merely because they don't understand him.

This film is driven a powerful, timeless message that applies even in today's world. Xenophobia in America reached a peak following the events of September 11th, 2001, and we as a culture continue to tamp down on any coalition that seeks to advance the welfare of those who are different than the "average." Fear continues to fuel the workings of society and, according to Klaatu and his BFF Gort (who actually is kind of terrifying, the void behind his visor when he prepares to shoot his laser blasts is chilling to the bone), this will lead to our downfall. If we're not destroyed by ourselves, we'll surely be eliminated by someone else in self-defense.

Although political themes weren't at all uncommon in B-movies like this, it's utterly rare to find a film so fundamentally impactful that it rings true throughout the ages and provides enough food for thought to feed a family of four. My numerical rating of The Day the Earth Stood Still is but a matter of personal and aesthetic taste as a filmgoer, but the message that lives on through it is undeniably important and skillfully honed.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

• The aliens not only have a device that stops all electricity on the planet, but also stops cars dead in their tracks so they don't crash into each other. Either that or the whole world was in gridlock traffic before it happened. That really would be the Day the Earth Stood Still, amirite?
• Through insurmountable witchery, two movies tickets cost Klaatu and Bobby only two dollars total. 

The morality of the past, in the future!:

• When a single mother goes on a date with a man, it takes only the space of a cut for the film to explain that her husband died in the war. You know, so we know there's no funny business going on.
• Somehow Tom and Helen are both totally OK with leaving Bobby to putz around Washington D. C. with a total stranger in order for them to go out. Even in the 1950's, the thirst is real.
• When visiting the Lincoln Memorial, even Klaatu agrees that he must have been a great man. USA! USA!
• After being brought back to life, Klaatu insists that only the Almighty Spirit can resurrect a soul. You can taste the producers' notes from here.

Sensawunda:

• The Day the Earth Stood Still is the first movie mentioned in the classic opening number from The Rocky Horror Picture Show - "Science Fiction, Double Feature" - so we know it's hella legit (I use casual language sometimes! Engage with my writing!). If a sci-fi movie is not in that song, it's not real. That's the rule.
• The alien phrase that calms Gort down - "Klaatu barada nikto" - was later used by Sam Raimi in Army of Darkness, which makes this film über hella legit. Rad.

TL;DR: The Day the Earth Stood Still is powerful and impactful beneath its cheesy special effects.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1346
Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture
2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend Without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

Cardboard Science: The Sand Trap

Because I'm a generous sort and I love to spoil you, included among the October festivities is a crossover feature with my friend Hunter over at Kinemalogue. He will be taking on three Census Bloodbath titles while I face three artifacts from one of his regular features - Cardboard Science, which explores science fiction B-movies from the 1950's. If the following film is any indication, I was rather nicer to him in the films that I assigned than he deigned to be with me. Wish me luck.

Year: 1953

Director: William Cameron Menzies

Cast: Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Jimmy Hunt

Run Time: 1 hour 18 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

William Cameron Menzies is a force to be reckoned with. He singlehandedly brought the art of production design to the forefront of Hollywood while chaperoning a troubled production to completion as it waded through several directors and a heaving, epic budget. That production was Gone With the Wind, perhaps the single most well-known film on the face of the planet.

He should have quit while he was ahead, because his 1953 sci-fi effort Invaders from Mars is about as exciting as a swift kick to the balls, with equally unfortunate consequences. To be fair, I'm not a huge fan of the genre to begin with, tending to prefer the films that skew more obviously toward horror like The Blob or The Thing From Another World, both of which I reviewed in this post.

But I agreed to take on this crossover for a reason - I wanted to be more informed about this fateful period in the development of genre cinema. So I didn't step into this movie with intent to hate it, and I'm sure I will greatly enjoy at least one of these three films (my heart is set on Them!, if I can ever find a copy of it). OK, I've said my piece. But Invaders from Mars still just isn't very good at all.

That's right, Little Billy. Bathe in the green light of shame.

To be fair, some elements are quite terrific for a film with the budget of a packet of corn nuts. But more on that in a moment. Invaders from Mars tells the story of one young David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt), a golly gosh gee whiz corn-fed all-American boy who witnesses a UFO landing in the sandy path outside his house. When his father George (Leif Erickson, perhaps best known for discovering America) goes to investigate, he is sucked into the pit and returns with an altered personality and a sinister mission.

As George collects authority figures and neighbors to be sent into the pit, David teams up with astronomer Dr. Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz) and child psychologist Dr. Pat Blake (Helena Carter) to gather the troops and combat the sinister Martian menace that is taking over the town. Part Body Snatchers and part Thing From Another World (both of which, admittedly, came later than this film), Invaders from Mars is half Cold War paranoia drama and half exuberant propaganda for the US Armed Forces, complete with a rousing pipe rendition of "The Army Goes Rolling Along" every time the tanks move out.

And boy do those tanks move out. A king-sized chunk of the second act is eaten up by endless stock footage of tanks rolling down rural streets as the calvary inches ever closer toward saving the day and preserving American Freedom.

Perhaps the single most American screenshot ever taken that doesn't have a flag in it.

It is quite telling when a film that barely manages to massage itself out to 75 minutes still feels the need to stuff itself with stock footage like Lucy in front of a conveyor belt of chocolate. The first act of Invaders from Mars is actually quite charming with the idyllic 50's haze that swims across it, but after about 20 minutes of primo cheese, the film relentlessly unspools itself, unraveling like a sweater until it eventually dissolves into nothingness. 

Quite literally. The film is so full of dissolves by the end, I don't think a single frame exists without some other, equally tedious frame splashed across it. It's quite like watching a slide show of your great-aunt's trip to Omaha. Everything looks exactly the same and equally flat and there's no discernible means of escape.

The charm that the ludicriously low budget manages to wring from the initial scenario quickly wears off during scene after scene of sparse sets, day for night stock footage so stupendously clumsy that I was convinced it must have had some deep secret meaning because nothing intentional could possibly look so bad, and the stagebound, claustrophobic feel of the whole thing. Not to mention the actors who apparently all had dictionaries at home that read "dialogue (n): shouting words at another human being."

To conserve money, the aliens are offscreen for the bulk of the movie, and when they finally do show up...

I mean, maybe they were going for the "swamp moss chic" aesthetic. Benefit of the doubt.

These are the mutants, pronounced "mute ants," servants to their host, a head on a platform which is supposedly mankind's ultimate intelligence. This is probably a metaphor for some ass thing or another, but it is buried beneath literal tons of repeat footage of mutants lumbering around like doofuses through damp caves with no discernible geography while military men blow things up in and around the sand pit.

 At least this guy looks rad as hell in the Makeup That Launched a Thousand Lady Gaga Videos.

I thought maybe we'd end this icy cold review with some actual complimentary comments, just for a change of pace. First off, despite the utterly strange "metaphor" of the Martians and the most dashed-off "it was all a dream or was it" ending in human history, there is some active thematic material to plumb. 

It's no different than any other paranoia thriller at the time - "Who can you trust? Are people in positions of authority really the people we should turn to in a crisis? What consequences could there be for sending nuclear weaponry into space? What dangers can befall us if we don't keep watching the skies? What will happen if we don't give bigger budgets to sci-fi movies?" - but it's an early example of the form that would come to power an entire decade of filmmaking. Also there's some interesting stuff with David finding surrogate parents in the two doctors after he loses his own to the aliens' mind control.

The most commendable aspect of the entire film is the influence it draws from German Expressionism in the set design. Although the interiors are Spartan and undecorated, and the houses plainly suburban, the central zone of conflict is a Caligari-esque, fractured bit of work, perfect in creating an actual sense of menace in the film as well as complementing the tone. The only other setpiece which comes even close is the massively long hallway that leads into the police station, creating an imposing sense of dread.

Cool sets can't make a movie better than its story, but at least it shows that there was a mind working behind the camera, and Menzies was nothing if not a great designer mind. It's a real shame that Invaders from Mars is such a wash and I would recommend it to nobody, but I'm glad it's there to help provide the shape of a genre that would produce some of the best subtle comments on society ever committed to film. Live long and prosper.

But seriously, look at this. I could marry this freaking hill.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

• The aliens eat through the earth with the magic of X-rays. I think this is the equivalent of the "computers are omnipotent magic boxes" phase of cinema in the 80's and 90's - where a technology is so new, nobody actually has any idea how it really works yet.
• "'Can't' is what our grandparents said about the airplane."
• Apparently Dr. Blake has a "favorite astronomer." Also, said astronomer apparently has the authority to issue an all-points bulletin on a high-ranking official.

The morality of the past, in the future!:

• Little David's parents sleep in separate beds, because when you're a scientist who marries a statuesque blonde, I guess you don't want to push your luck.
• Any problem can be solved with a little boy's pluck and the Good Ol' Boys of the American Armed Forces!

Sensawunda:

• According to (admittedly sometimes unreliable) IMDb trivia, although the film was released in 1953, it was the first sci-fi script ever written in the 50's, so there's something to be said about that. As for the quality, let's just call it... training wheels.
• Today and every day for the rest of my life, I will be constantly astonished that this film has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. Does this mean that every other 50's sci-fi is even worse? Hunter is a braver soul than I.

TL;DR: Invaders from Mars is not very good, but it doesn't really have the money to be and it shows flashes of cheesy fun.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1524

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture
2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend Without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)